Parting with Jess

Off to Canada for three years late the next morning, last family get-together, all of us suitably sentimental. The parents left us alone at eleven, with the television going and the last of the wine before us. Mother wanted to make up our beds before she went, but we waved her away. The spare room had a truckle bed and in a cupboard blankets enough for that and the couch in here. We hadn't actually agreed who would have the couch and who the bed, Jess and I, but as she'd spent the previous night in the spare room I presumed I would stay in here.

Poor little Jess had broken up rather nastily a few weeks before, and in the day and a half we'd spent together, the first time we'd seen each other much in about two years, she'd got weepy several times and then got apologetic, and I had cuddled her. It was nice holding my sister. After the first awkwardness it was just like holding another girl: she wasn't angular or brittle, but soft and solid the way a beautiful woman should be. Her faintly freckled cheeks cried out to be kissed, not once but often, and her hair was lustrous and fragrant. Once when she had gone up north to live with Bob, back so long ago, we had kissed on the lips. I still remembered the specialness of that, and earlier today I had tried it again, for no reason, other than that she was in my arms and we were alone and she had said she'd missed me. She returned it threefold and we walked away to dinner.

Since then, conversation, and television unregarded, and good wine and a glass or so of champagne. After a while we all settled into silence mostly, and watched, nothing very rewarding, and when the killer killed again and the constable was chastised by his inspector and the credits rolled, our parents gave up the attempt to keep us polite company, and went off to bed.

We were left alone, Jess and myself, she leaning on my shoulder and me with an arm round her. We were not cuddling, exactly, merely close and content. We had been like that for an hour or more, interrupted only as I leant to pour or accept another glass for us both. Her dark hair was a river over the palest pink mohair jumper; beneath it she had a denim dress that at the moment just exposed the first contours of her knee. My hand rested on the jut of her thigh, palm across her midriff. From time to time I let it ride up a little and my thumb stroke her, and in doing that I could feel the roughness where her bra started. It was innocent.

After a few minutes of this she craned a little and kissed my neck. This we couldn't have done while anyone else was here. When she turned back to look at the screen I examined her profile, the elegant prominence of her nose, and dropped a kiss on it. She turned to me and our lips met; we lingered in this affection, then she reached for her glass. There was only a little left: she drained it.

'Do you want to open another?' she asked. My glass was only half full, and that was all there was.

'You up for it? You look tired. We should make the beds.'

'I'm okay. Do you want to? You don't need to be up early. How long's the flight?'

'Oh, five hours or something. Plus all the airport stuff.'

'Well you want a good time now. I hate airports. Let's open another.'

For this I had to remove her entirely from my body, and really regretted losing that warm companionship. She lay down fully on the couch where I had been and seemed to close her eyes: I wondered whether she could take much more. I poured her a small glass and refilled mine after hastily finishing it. It was Father's good stuff and I didn't want to do them the injustice of mixing them. She rose up to an alerted, seated position and looked into my face as she idly retrieved the cork from the corkscrew.

'I'll miss you so much.'

'You said that before,' I smiled. 'You're very sweet.'

'I didn't realize how much before. Just lying here thinking, about not being able to do this for three years.'

'We've never done this before though.'

'But I know we can now. I didn't know it felt so good. It's like the good bits after sex, but without the... the hurt and risk.'

'You'll meet someone,' I sighed heavily.

'I know,' Jess answered in a small voice. 'But I miss...' she added, trailing off so that I wasn't really sure what she missed. We'd talked about relationships a little but never about sex as such, so it has hard to know how specific she was being.

'Companionship?' I tried, then casually went on, 'Love, sex?'

'All of them. And trust.'

'Someone will come along.'

She sighed and looked out into the distance. The bulletin of international news had come to an end, monsoon floods and presidential primaries and the Horn of Africa, and now they returned to home news, cockle pickers and media frenzy and ramblers' rights, none of which we paid any attention to. We left it on for company. A film came on, and we still hadn't said much. I felt unsatisfied sipping wine and seated upright beside her, after the intimacy of earlier. Our last night seemed to be slipping past.

'Did you say you might be able to come out?' I said at length.

'After I graduate, why not? If I get a job. Can't go overseas on student grants.'

'It'd be wonderful to see you.'

'Might get some proper cuddling.'

'Who, you or me?'

'Both of us!' she laughed. 'We've only got each other at the moment. I wish I'd known how soft you can be.'

'Brothers and sisters don't usually get on that well.'

'Oh, when they're kids growing up. But we've been really good friends since we've been adults.'

'When we're together. I wish you hadn't been in Edinburgh all that time.'

'I enjoyed it a lot first, so much. And it's a beautiful place, fantastic to live.'

'Do you want some more cuddle?'

'Oh yes please!' she eagerly responded. We scrunched up together and I draped an arm over her; she snuggled in tight and I kissed the available patch of neck. Then she settled in quietly to watch the film, and after a minute I realized why. There was rather a powerful, sensual scene at the beginning, and I was uncomfortably aware of my body stirring as a handsome, lightly-bearded youth ate out an attractive young woman. Jess wriggled and made a happy noise as she watched. I looked down at my little sister's face and jutting bosom, and something else stirred within.

'What is this?'

'She's Betty Blue and he's, um, Zoot, or Zop or... whatever. Do you like it?'

'Er, yes... makes you want to... be there.'

'Oh god yes! But we can't watch it all, I hate the way it ends, it makes me sad.'

For answer I hugged her closer and stroked her hair. When the sex scene ended she looked up at me requesting a kiss. I obliged and this time our lips were parted and our tongues touched and probed. It was, in its way, the most marvellous kiss I had ever had, combining so many emotions, strong among which was frustration.

Once we were watching the film again she began, 'That's the only scene I've--', but broke off. I waited for her to finish and when she didn't I prompted her. 'Um... that I've ever come during,' she finally said in an uneasy voice.

'Oh, sorry,' I whispered, meaning sorry for pushing her into saying it. She flashed a smile and kissed me on the cheek.

'There's a bit later where she kisses up and down his penis,' she said. 'But he's asleep so it's not so arousing.'

'Do you want to watch that far?'

'No. Look, we've seen the good bit, we could just turn it off now.'

'You want to get to bed then.'

'No no, just turn it off,' said Jess, exerting herself to reach across to the remote control. In a moment the room was still, and it was dark everywhere but the pool of light over us, two wine glasses and a section of indigo couch. After another sip she leaned back into me, back against chest, and tucked her head under mine. My two hands closed around her waist and sought a comfortable position on her belly. We sat like this for a while.

Her breathing became regular and audible. I would have thought she was dropping off if she hadn't from time to time addressed a remark to me in a clear voice. We spoke little for some time. My right hand was easing over a little section of belly in a slow rhythm, caressed by the mohair. My left sat on her thigh, where if she hadn't been wearing a dress the thumb could almost have shuffled up to touch her labia. When that thought entered my head I shifted it a bit nearer. A smile flickered on her faraway face.

In this position I could kiss her temple and upper cheek. This was enough for the long, contented silence we sat in. I indulged occasionally. After a while I bent down and sought her lips. The rearrangement was awkward, but the reward was that she opened her eyes wide and fiercely, and thrust her tongue up into my mouth. As my breathing became juddering and heavy my right hand made wider circles, pressed harder, and crawled up onto the hillock of her right breast. At her sharp breath I eased off and dropped lower. She picked up my hand, eyes still fixed to mine, and returned it to her breast.

This time I explored the whole thing, top and peak and sides, carefully kneading and pressing it, feeling the bra cloth and the nipple below. Once again she picked up my hand and guided it down to her belly again, laying it by the waistband. As I resumed my stroking she was unsatisfied, and with her other hand tugged up a bit of jumper. Taking my cue from her I inserted my fingers under it, and had two fingers on her blouse and two just resting on the sliver of flesh where it rode up from her skirt. Again she tugged her clothes and gave me more access, and I slid my hand in until it was covering her bare belly under the clothes. We kissed once more then she leant back into me, cheek by cheek, eyes shut. So I caressed my sister's skin, while she sighed.

Until now my penis had been too crushed into her coccyx to make itself a danger, but now it was grown stiff enough beneath her to need an adjustment. Jess felt and knew.

'Sorry, I'm squashing you.'

'It's okay.'

'We've got to get... where we can both be comfortable,' she said, and she moved around to face me. Our legs tangled, we embraced more like lovers than relaxing friends, and I found the loose entrance in her clothing again. From this angle it was better to move round and stroke her back, but I kept returning to her belly. Half her blouse was now loose from where it had been tucked in, and when once I swept blouse and jumper together up towards her bra I exposed a good part of her blemishless hip to glisten in the yellowed light. She bloomed in a smile of delight and my heart leapt with how lovely she was. The work of kissing her all over the face made my hand go still, and after indulging me she reminded me of its duty by placing it low on her belly again.

'You're enjoying this as much as I am,' I accused.

'Well I can feel how much you are.'

'Is that an invitation?'

Her eyes contracted. It was as if she had not yet considered where this would end. I don't suppose her brain really had been free of more lustful thoughts, any more than mine had, but we probably both assumed that we would pull back from some fairly safe limit quite soon. I shouldn't have said that when I did. And now I was awkward keeping my hand where it was, so I took it away. She pouted and put it back. So that was all right. Then I leaned in and licked her pouting lips, and after a moment she opened her mouth and invited my tongue in.

We sank down onto the couch, her backwards, me over here and crushing her breasts down, then rolling aside enough to keep my hand fondling her bare midriff as we kissed wetly. This put her in imminent peril of rolling off the edge and hitting her head on the coffee table, and I had one leg tightly pressed against hers to keep her in place. Not only the leg was pressing her. I cradled her head in my arm, and we separated and looked into one another as the only motion was other hand creeping across her belly, then at last tucking itself gingerly under the hem of her skirt. Nothing happened just yet, but I rested it there.

She noticed that despite my precautions she was going to tumble off, and with regret we untangled. Some more wine gave us a chance to breathe more normally. 'Let's get those beds made,' she said, so we trooped into the spare room at the far end. Our own old beds had long since been sold or scrapped, and this small room was now the only provision for occasional visitors. When she visited the city Jess preferred to spend the night at a girlfriend's who lived close by, and was only here tonight because it was my last night among them.

For some reason I had brought along both our glasses, and I set them on the bedside table. 'Good idea,' Jess averred when she noticed them. There was linen in one cupboard, and she found enough to cover the queen-sized but uncomfortable truckle bed, which required an extra duvet and blankets below it to stifle the springs. The upper duvet smelt of age. She turned it down and sat on the cream blankets, legs behind her. 'Now where were we,' she mused, after a mouthful of red wine.

'We were going to go to bed.'

'I thought you were going to console me. For not having you around.'

My sister's upper body was stretched out on the bed now, arms past her head behind her, inviting me in. I climbed across her and sought the tenderness of her kisses again. This time my other hand approached from the other side, loosening what little of her blouse was still tucked into the skirt. More blatant now, my fingers delved down and splayed half across her belly and half into her skirt, rubbing up and down. She was very obviously content to accept this, so while I held her eyes I edged further, caressed the pubic hair that silkenly graced my fingers, and felt the contour of her mound. My middle finger found her valley and eased into it, slick and wet and responsive. Jess whimpered briefly when I touched her clitoris, and began to strain towards me: both her mouth and her vulva together. My lower two fingers explored the deeps of her vagina while we kissed, and she squeezed my head onto her with an urgent hand.

I didn't want this to end. Dipping into her velvety depth was heavenly, watching the emotions play over her face. Sometimes she couldn't believe she was lying there letting her brother do this, or then she fluttered in bliss as a deeper or more angled stroke caressed something inside her I could barely imagine.

'Higher,' she whispered at last, emphasizing it with a tongue kiss that almost drowned me. I dragged my wet fingers up the length of her labia and felt the eager button at their head. Jess squirmed and pressed into me as I stroked, and when her vocal noises became sharper I stopped. 'Oh, don't stop!' she moaned in frustration.

'I want to see you,' I pleaded. This was naughty and calculated of me because I knew she would quickly do anything to have me resume, whereas before now she might suddenly have realized she wanted to stop it all. While her eyes were briefly glazed as she collected thought, I brought my fingers up and licked them. It almost made me come. My own sister's!

She flipped onto her back with a snort of annoyance, exposing to me the zip of her skirt down its rear. Annoyance was just the sort of thing to make people break off delicate encounters, unless their need was uncontrollable, so I smiled to myself as I slowly reached for the zip and undid it. She was much faster in her actions then, shucking off her skirt with both hands followed by a kick while she rolled back to face me. I had just a moment to waver between her coolly roseate legs and her frustrated face, till she arched up her bottom again and peeled down her pants. My heart was in my mouth as the thick dark triangle was revealed, and I hesitated a moment before taking the task from her and sliding her pants reverently all the way down her legs.

I held them up to my face, just near my nose, shuddering with pleasure, as she gazed up at me letting me do it. Then she uttered the word 'please' in a low tone, and spread her legs more. The hair ran only lightly and finely around her vulva, which was short and deeply enfolded, and pearly with need. Whether she still imagined I would be using my fingers, or what would happen now, I cannot say. I was transfixed, and she was still, waiting for me. She did not flinch when I leaned my face in slowly.

The taste was nectarous, she was soaked with wanting me there, and when I had drunk my fill and rose to suck around her clitoris she began her rhythmic moaning again, her shoulders jerking. As I glanced up to see her face, taking a break from the fantastic nakedness full against me, I saw her watching with an adoring smile, but I also saw clothes. Knowing she would understand the desire, I stopped again and clutched at the bottom of her jumper. She grabbed it from me and quickly wrestled it over her head, and in a businesslike way undid the blouse and bra and flicked them off the edge of the bed. Then she lay back, made her legs even wider than before, and with this gesture demanded her reward.

Eating out my little sister was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Jess was constantly slick and inviting, pushing herself into me and smearing herself over me when she could control herself, making wild ungovernable hums and whimpers, turning to bite her arm when the noise built up. I tried to prolong it with excursions all across her secret thighs and down to her anus and inside her, and several times she let me take her to the peak and deprive her, but her need for release eventually got command and made her grip me tightly into her as I licked her clitoris. She grabbed the pillow from underneath her head and clamped it over her face as she came. I could still hear a kind of stifled yell and hoped no-one else could.

She flung it off her and let out her breath very heavily. The taut flesh of her thighs fell away from me, and as she looked up at the ceiling and I admired her breasts with a little mole on each, I realized I should make the most of this incoherence before she had a chance to think of next things. I stripped fast. She noticed, she looked at my penis, she looked into my face, she protruded her lips for a kiss.

So I lay down on my sister's naked body and began a long and loving kiss with her. Her delicate breasts were pressed under me. Her hand found my penis and pointed it at herself, where she accepted me, felt me slide in, and we lay like that for a minute or so kissing hungrily and getting used to what our coupled bodies felt like. As I started to become less rigid, and I was still the hardest I had ever known myself, I began thrusting and pushing into her, savouring her vaginal grip as I dragged her out with me and plunged back in, over and over again. Our mouth passion became frantic and wet. I was squeezing one breast and occasionally dipping to suck the other, returning to her sensitive face with animal hunger.

Jess saw and felt me tense up, and pulled back to watch how her brother's face contorted as I came inside her. After I came once and thought I was empty I kept jerking hard into her for a few more strokes, and began to come again.

When I was spent I lay on top of her breathing, then after a minute rolled off and lay beside her on our bed. We kissed lightly. I couldn't remember the last time either of us had spoken words. Jess put her hand down and cupped my limp and sticky flesh, and we lay there.

'We should make up your bed, then mess it up a bit,' she said at last. Ever practical, she got up, found the blankets and sheets on the shelf, and went out into the living-room stark naked carrying them, but not before refusing to waste the residue on her hand, giving it a good satisfied lick. I heaved myself off the bed with a sigh of great contentment and followed her in. There was probably no danger of being caught: my parents had an en-suite so there was no need for them to be out here at night, unless noises woke them up. The place was a mess. We had not had a party, just a few drinks, but it looked so disorganized.